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I went to church to sing at our Good Friday mass. Bobo said that about 10 minutes after I left, a car smashed a telephone pole into two pieces near our house. Must have been going pretty fast for that to happen. I live near an intersection where there are frequent accidents. People often drive through the red lights. I imagine that’s what happened once again.

Just look at the view of the top of the pole just hanging there. Never seen anything like that before.

I got a call for another appointment (spinal MRI) in May. I decided not to go to that one either. Phoned the hospital and told them I was not about to come in at 4:00 a.m. in the morning and I wanted the complaints department. She asked me why. I told her that my last MRI three weeks ago was at 10:30 at night, there were 3 trauma patients admitted and I didn’t get home until 3:00. I had insomnia after that and it took me several days to recuperate. She told me that they are a trauma hospital and one of the machines was broken. “So what,” I told her, “This happens to me every time I go there, not just the last time I was there.” And why don’t they phone people when they are 3 hours behind? I told her that I didn’t think it was fair to send palliative cancer patients who have had surgeries, numerous rounds of chemotherapy and radiation treatments to get scans done in the middle of the night. I thought that was cruel. The Odette Centre was suppose to be a Cancer Centre and why didn’t they have their own MRI machine? I am sure there wasn’t a shortage of cancer patients lined up to have scans done on a daily basis. A twenty minute scan shouldn’t take over 4 hours to complete.

“Here’s a thought”, I told her….”People who are dying don’t want to wait around in waiting rooms for scans all night. It’s bad enough they have to wait hours on end for doctor’s visits. And besides all this, I don’t like the fact that I have to by-pass the hobos in the front lobby at night when I come in. I’ve never seen any security there at night and I’m by myself because my husband has to stay home with the things we have at home called our kids.”

She said that the next “Day Time” appointment was 4 weeks later. “Oh, that’s too bad,” I told her. “That might screw up my doctor’s clinical trials because I’m one of his patients.” She told me she would phone me right back with the number of the complaints department.

I think some of Maria O’Kane’s audacity is rubbing off on me. There comes a point in your life when you just don’t want to take anymore crap and you begin to push back. I’m beginning to do that now. Maria always told me that you have to be your own advocate, the doctors know nothing, and so what if you were late for an appointment or didn’t feel up to it. Don’t go.

Ten minutes later I got a call….”Oh, you can come in for your scan at 10:30 in the morning, but it’s on Victoria Day.” “I’ll be there”, I told her happily. I also got their “Patient’s Experience” email address so I can write them a lovely little note to express my true feelings. I can’t wait. And I will write to them because I really don’t think it’s right to do this to cancer patients. I’m sure there are others that feels this way but are too sick to complain about it. It’s just not fair.